Enterprises that will deploy IoT solutions say that they are trimming back their plans for the next 12-months, according to the IoT M2M Council (IMC), a trade group whose membership is comprised of over 17,000 technology buyers from around the globe in the nascent technology sector.
The IMC’s Quarterly IoT Buyers’ Index surveys its members about their buying plans up to two years out, and the relative number of enterprise users looking to make IoT investments in a six- or 12-month timeframe has shown slight decreases over the last three consecutive quarters.
Results run contrary to the overly optimistic picture
“We attribute this largely to global economic uncertainties that began at the start of Q3 2015. It’s important to note that, while enterprise users are a plurality of the IMC membership, we also have strong representation among OEMs and apps developers. The picture is mixed for those other groups and there’s a certain natural lag between these constituencies in terms of their investment. Still, the results run contrary to the overly optimistic picture painted by some industry analysts,” says IMC executive director Keith Kreisher.
Membership of the London-based IMC is a cross-section of IoT buyers in 25 different vertical markets, with fairly even distribution between core industry sectors like energy, transportation, healthcare, building, manufacturing, and public services. The group publishes content streams for all of these markets, drawing roughly 30% of its membership from Europe, 30% fromNorth America, and the rest from other regions, and growing at a rate of almost 300 new members weekly.
New membership in retail
“IMC Adopters are telling us that things continue to be very active for new deployments in the energy, building, and smart cities sectors,” says Kreisher. “And while we’re generating a lot of new membership in the retail market, it looks like that sector will be coming on line more slowly.” He also reports a surge in interest in systems integration services, according to the latest survey, as well as consistently increasing awareness of Low-Power Wide-Area Networks.
